Wonder Woman: So nice, she reboots twice! (#SFWApro)

In my last Wonder Woman post I predicted it would be a while before my next rereading post. But the issues launching the next soft reboot parallel the Greg Rucka/Liam Sharp Rebirth TPB The Truth so I figured I’d combine them in one post.

After exposing Morgan Tracy as the Master Planner, Gerry Conway’s follow-up issue (cover by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano, all rights remain with current holder) has Diana trying to get back to normal. However the unceasing violence of Man’s World is getting to her, as is the police inability to lock up bad people (because Miranda rights! Fourth amendments! Obviously guilty criminals getting off!). And learning Tracy arranged Steve’s death just rubs that wound raw. So Diana returns to Paradise Island, thinking maybe she’ll stay for good. Hippolyta decides the best way to make her daughter happy is to erase her memories of Steve (not the first time she’s mucked with Diana’s memories).

Everything is fine, but after a couple of issues dealing with extradimensional intelligences mistakenly thinking the Amazons are a threat, a plane crashes on Paradise Island. The pilot? Steve Trevor.

Diana doesn’t remember him, though she’s conscious she feels astonishingly attracted to him almost at once. A bewildered Hippolyta goes to ask Aphrodite who explains that this Steve Trevor is a parallel world version whose plane crashed through the dimensional barriers into our world (and there’s no way to figure out where his home Earth is). Aphrodite concludes that destiny is clearly a Diana/Steve ‘shipper, so there’s no point in fighting it. Instead, she magically erases the world’s memory of Steve Trevor’s death so that this Steve can take up his counterpart’s life unawares. Once again the Amazons hold a tournament to decide who will accompany Steve back to Man’s World; while reluctant to leave, Diana is obligated to compete and finally accepts she can’t let her fears hold her back. She and Steve head off to the US together.

This, of course, is close to Robert Kanigher’s late-Silver Age reboot, but that suffered from lack of clarity — was it a complete reboot? Set back in the 1940s? Or what? Here readers know exactly why the book is redoing the origin. In the same retro spirit, Diana would go on to become a military intelligence officer alongside Steve in subsequent issues—I haven’t read ’em yet but I remember them. Apparently it was a successful move as this reboot lasted close to sixty issues — nothing since they dropped that set-up has done that well.

I only wish The Truth had been as good a reboot. Capping off Rucka’s first two volumes, this finishes retconning the New 52 Wonder Woman away.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

It turns out that Ares is imprisoned on Themiscyra to prevent him destroying the world with war madness; the Amazons are there to guard him. If Diana ever returned home, that would give a road map to Ares’ sons Deimos and Phobos, who could then free him and drown the world in blood. To prevent that, all her trips back to the island have been imaginary (presumably so have all her New 52 Olympian adventures). Now that she knows she’s exiled from Themiscyra forever, she starts over with Steve, and the story ends with them exhausted in bed after making love.

As I said after reading Rucka’s first two TPBs, I really like his handling of Diana, I just don’t like the story he’s telling. This could have been wrapped up in two or three issues instead of seven — did we really need the two issues were Diana was locked up in an asylum believing her mind has snapped? And wouldn’t it just have been easier for the Amazons to tell Di she could never return home than play these games? I know, that’s par for the course in retcons and reboots, but much as I disliked the New 52 WW, this didn’t work for me. And unlike Conway’s, it doesn’t look like this is leading anywhere good: the current arc is focused on the Twin Brother We Never Knew Diana Had and Grail, Darkseid’s Amazon daughter. As they were both introduced by Geoff Johns in his Darkseid War arc in Justice League, I wonder if the current writer picked them or Johns’ standing at DC means they must be treated as the next big thing. I imagine I’ll find out when the library gets the TPBs.